What's better than one neighborhood French restaurant? Two neighborhood French restaurants. Laurent Legendre, owner of Clementine in San Francisco's Richmond District, opened the less expensive and more casual Bistro Clement last week right across the street.

Chef de cuisine Franck Ouvrard, previously of San Francisco's Le Charm and Hyde Street Bistro, executes rustic French dishes that are at home in the comfortable 45-seat dining room.

The cozy, rich hues of the dark orange walls and milk chocolate ceiling are offset by white trim. A large mirror adds depth to the space, while the tile floor and Belle Epoque posters contribute to the French bistro feel. A covered patio seats an additional 45 and will eventually have heaters for year- round dining.

Start with a frisee salad with bacon and poached egg or a thick fish soup garnished with croutons, grated cheese and rouille. The hearty fare continues with entrees like pork tenderloin served with soft polenta, cabbage and a subtle thyme sauce.

Complete the meal with three cheeses -- selections change weekly -- or with a classic tarte Tatin or creme brulee.

New York's pizza, like its Yankees and its attitude, is the stuff of legend. You can get a taste of all three at Will Gioia's new hole-in-the-wall in Berkeley, Gioia Pizzeria. A pounded copper oven hood dominates the tiny space on Hopkins Street, long the home of Magnani's Poultry before it moved down the block last year.

Gioia, who has cooked at Zuni Cafe and Oliveto, opened up a few weeks ago and so far has five pizzas on his menu, three red (sausage and onions, pepperoni, cheese) and two white (clam, broccoli and ricotta). They're giant 18-inch pies, with that thin, stretchy New York crust.

This is a place to buy a slice or get a pie to go. The counter, with a few stools, is too narrow to handle a whole pizza. There's house-made organic strawberry lemonade to wash it down.

A's fans, especially, be warned: The boss himself, a Jersey transplant, is likely to greet you in a navy Yankees cap, and a Babe Ruth cookie jar sits on the counter. .

Daily doses of dark chocolate can make your heart healthier, according to a new study by UCSF scientists.

Researchers found that eating the equivalent of a Hershey bar sized serving of flavonoid-rich dark chocolate daily can improve blood vessels' ability to dilate, or expand, thus making it easier for blood to circulate.

"Better blood flow is good for your heart," said the study's author Mary Engler, a professor of physiological nursing in the UCSF School of Nursing. The study appears in the June issue of the Journal of the American College of Nutrition.

In the double-blind, placebo-controlled study, people who ate 1.6 ounces of dark, flavonoid-rich chocolate every day for two weeks had better blood vessel response than those who ate milk chocolate. The authors also found that the participants did not have increased blood cholesterol levels after two weeks of daily chocolate snacks.

The marketing wizards at Carls' Jr. are bucking the slim-down trend big time with a burger that might hold the fast-food world's record for fat and calories. The "1 lb. Double Six Dollar Burger" is the latest offering in the 1, 006-store chain's effort to upgrade the image of the fast-food burger.

Here's what you get for your $5.49: two 1/2-pound Angus beef patties, three slices of American cheese, pickles, red onions, lettuce, tomatoes, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise.

Here's what else you get: 1,420 calories, 910 from fat. Keep in mind that a 130-pound woman needs only about 2,000 calories a day. Of course, the average woman is not the target here. A spokeswoman said the pounder is geared more to ravenous teen-aged boys and their dads.

While we're on the subject of bigger food in a time of ever-expanding waistlines, the never-ending assault of Shrek 2-branded products now includes "ogre-sized" M&Ms in fashionable, earth-toned Shrek colors.

We took a few packages to The Chronicle test kitchen and compared the ogres with original M&Ms. The new candies are 2 1/2 times bigger. The individual packages are twice as big, too.

But a labeling trick makes it hard to figure out just how many calories you're eating. The regular M&Ms serving size is listed as one whole package. The ogre-sized one has two servings, which makes the rest of the nutritional information on the package seem the same -- if you don't read the fine print.

It would be hard to imagine that a Shrek-drunk kid is going to be happy to stop at half a pack.